"Unsolved History"If NASA engineers invented a time machine tomorrow, you can be sure hist

"Unsolved History"

If NASA engineers invented a time machine tomorrow, you can be sure historians would be shelling out top dollar for just a few minutes at the wheel. History books are filled with mysteries, hotly debated issues and question able stories, and if you could just get a look at the real scene of the event, you could finally answer a lot of these big questions. Imagine witnessing the beginnings of the American Revolution, the historic battles of the Civil War or any of the major events that have defined the past 100 years.

Discovery Channel's hit weekly series "Unsolved History" has set out to do the next best thing. Using the most advanced investigation tools modem technology has to offer, the "Unsolved History" researchers attempt to reconstruct a famous event by piecing together any hard evidence that remains. Instead of relying on what the history books say alone, the investigators take a fresh look at the available facts.

The basic idea is to approach these historical mysteries in the same way criminal investigators approach modern ones. By looking at each historical event as a crime scene, the show's researchers can scientifically devise the most likely scenario for the historical event in question. So far, their conclusions have been both surprising and enlightening.

What does it take to do all this？ It turns out you need a large staff of historians, scientists and investigators, and a lot of sophisticated equipments. Just as in a real criminal case, investigators bring hard evidence and human intuition together to come up with the most likely explanation of what actual happened.

The result is an interesting, highly unique show. It's part history, part detective story and part technological showcase.

The Premise

"Unsolved History" revolves around interesting stories from history that have an element of mystery about them. The producers' first challenge for every episode is to come up with a suitable subject. They are generally drawn to three types of episode subjects: topics with a certain amount of controversy surrounding them, topics that are misunderstood by the general public, and topics with big lingering questions.

In the first episode, for example, the producers investigate "Pickett's Charge," a fairly controversial event, at least among Civil War buffs. Was Confederate Major General George E. Pickett's infamous attack in the Battle of Gettysburg a desperate, last-gasp failure from the out-manned Confederates, or was it a valiant(英勇的), heroic last stand,as the Southern army claimed？ The "Unsolved History" crew concludes that neither version is accurate. In another controversy-driven episode, the researchers attempt to separate folk mythology from fact in reconstructing what actually happened in the battle of the Alamo.

In a later episode, the research crew gets to the bottom of a widely misunderstood subject, the Boston Massacre. The common view among most Americans is that British soldiers fired upon a crowd of innocent civilian colonists, in an act of inexcusable oppression. The evidence, according to the" Unsolved History" crew, paints a very different picture—they assert that the British soldiers, backed into a corner by an angry mob, fired in self defense.

In another episode, the crew investigates a different kind of "police incident", the famous shoot-out at the O.K. Corral. In the popular old west mythology, four lawmen, led by Wyatt Earl？ And gunslinger Doc Holliday, valiantly protected the town of Tombstone from a gang of villainous outlaws. The Unsolved History crew approaches the event just as they would a police shooting today, using modern forensic(法医的) tools to determine if it was "clean" police work or an abuse of power. Just as with the Boston Massacre, the investigators conclude that this was not a prudent use of police power.

The “l

A．Y

B．N

C．NG